Former president Donald Trump posted on Truth Social on Tuesday afternoon about being unable to speak.
“This is a total Witch Hunt. Hours of sitting down and listening to nothing except EXONERATION AND LIES. The Trial is going like a speeding bullet, because the Judge is working hard to make all of his friends happy. Merchan is Rigged, Crooked, and, above all, and without question, CONFLICTED. It’s a disgrace to our Country — They’ve taken away my Right to Free Speech. ELECTION INTERFERENCE!!!”
v

LONDON — A man carrying a sword in east London killed a teenage boy and left four others injured, including police officers, during an attack Tuesday morning.
A 36-year-old suspect was Tasered and then arrested at the scene. Footage from a bystander showed a man wearing a yellow sweater walking on the roofs of low-rise homes in a residential area in Hainault, a northeast area of London. A police officer yelled “drop your sword,” before warning residents to “lock your doors.”


The police said they were called just before 7 a.m. with reports that a vehicle had driven into a house and that people were being stabbed.
Chris Bates, a local resident, told the BBC that the attacker “had a big samurai sword, basically. It was a huge sword. I saw it all from my bedroom window and then when he went into the driveway, a couple doors down, I ran outside and then the police Tasered him there.”


The Metropolitan Police’s Chief Superintendent Stuart Bell told reporters at the scene that an investigation was “in its very early stages” but that the incident was not being treated as terror-related or reflective of a broader threat.



The police said that a 14-year-old boy was taken to a hospital and died of his injuries. Four others, including two members of the public and two police officers, were also hospitalized but didn’t appear to have injuries that were life-threatening. The police officers were stabbed and needed surgery.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said in a statement that “this is a shocking incident. My thoughts are with those affected and their families.”
While sword attacks are uncommon, knife crime rates in London are among the highest in the country. According to the Home Office, some 14,577 offenses were recorded in the past year to December 2023 — up 20 percent from the previous year.

RSL wins vs Municipal from Guatemala.

I watched a good chunk of this game. It was brutal. Are the Central American Clubs always this bad? Or do they save it for American teams?

I see we have two MLS teams tonight with Whitecaps vs Sounders then the Galaxy play a team from Trinidad called Central FC. Can an MLS team do it this year?

I was just reading some of the posts in the recent thread about the House passing aid to Ukraine, etc. Some people bitching about spending more money. Others mentioning on top of tax cuts also. Now, the 2017 tax cut was a total effing gift to the top few percent of earners and wealthy as well as corporations were just given carte blanche to get buy backs of stocks and remain paying little to no taxes. Of course this was all done by the Repubs. The same repubs that have so many reps who parrot Putin.

But dont you realize that the U. S. govt has a huge amount of assets on their ledger to pay off the debt.

Let's name a few, from what I have read there is over $100 trillion in oil and gas reserves to be leased. There are trillions in mineral rights. The govt can always put up tolls on interstates to help make money to pay for infrastructure.

At least Biden and the Dems put in that law that corporations have to pay at least 15% tax on earnings (although the big money businesses will try to hide and cheat their away from paying taxes).

Do you agree with this assessment that can be found on the web?

Cool to see someone in need win the thing. Hopefully it doesn’t lead to squabbling inside the family.

A week after he broke with the majority of House Republicans and voted to send $60.8 billion in aid to Ukraine, Representative Max Miller took the stage at a performing arts center in his Ohio district bracing for backlash.
Instead, Mr. Miller, a first-term congressman who spent four years in the White House as a top aide to former President Donald J. Trump, was greeted at a town hall-style meeting on Saturday in the city of Solon with a sustained round of applause. Several attendees stood to publicly thank him for his vote, and a line of locals queued up afterward to shake his hand.
“Anything we can do to support the Ukrainian victory over the Russian invasion would be a positive thing for the world,” said Randy Manley, a retiree from Strongsville, Ohio, who said he planned to vote for Mr. Trump in November.
More than 500 miles west, in Iowa City, Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks, a vulnerable Republican who won her district by six points in 2020, had a similar experience.
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Kenneth Kirk, 62, a resident of Newton, Iowa, arrived at a fund-raiser for Ms. Miller-Meeks headlined by Speaker Mike Johnson — who had risked his job to push through the aid — primed to rail against the money for Ukraine.
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“We’re bankrupt, and if we can afford to send that kind of money to another country, we’re paying too much taxes,” Mr. Kirk said. But hearing from Mr. Johnson changed his mind, he said.
“I know a little bit more about it now that I’ve listened to him,” Mr. Kirk said. “I mean, I thought, ‘I’m against it,’ but, you know — what do I do? What he said made a lot of sense to me.”
The reactions suggested that even as Republicans are waging an internal war over aiding Ukraine — one that is continuing even after the funding package cleared Congress and was signed into law — the issue is more divisive in their own ranks than it is among many of their constituents.
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Immediately after the vote last weekend, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, the right-wing Republican who threatened to oust Mr. Johnson for allowing the vote, predicted that her colleagues who backed the measure would have hell to pay.
“I’m actually going to let my colleagues go home and hear from their constituents,” she said at the time. Washington lawmakers, Ms. Greene said, were so “obsessed with voting for foreign wars” that they had lost sight of how irate Americans were. She expected her Republican colleagues would join her push to remove Mr. Johnson after getting an earful from their constituents.
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In some bright red districts, voters’ frustration was palpable over the weeklong recess after the vote.
“They’re very angry — it wasn’t even a close call,” Representative Chip Roy, Republican of Texas, who voted against aid for Ukraine, said after hearing from his constituents.
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Mr. Miller had come prepared to defend himself from just that sort of reaction. He pre-emptively told the crowd in Solon that 80 percent of the funding for Kyiv would actually stay in the United States, where it would be used to purchase equipment for U.S. troops and flow to American manufacturers who would make the weapons to replenish U.S. stockpiles.

But he encountered little resistance from residents of his solidly Republican district in northeastern Ohio.
“It’s a security issue,” said Elyssa Olgin, who works in public relations and lives in Solon. “I have two boys; I don’t want them fighting there.”
Ms. Miller-Meeks said constituents had told her, “Thank you for not caving in.”
Even those who disagreed with her vote, she said, were “respectful of the fact that I’m willing to talk about it and I don’t hide from it.”
Representative Ashley Hinson, Republican of Iowa, said she found voters changed their minds when she explained why she voted for Ukraine aid after meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv.

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“People understand, especially hearing someone like Mike Johnson tee it up and talk about how all these things are interconnected: Russia, Iran and China,” she said.
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About 61 percent of Republican voters say the United States should not send weapons or military aid to Ukraine, according to a CBS poll this month. In an interview, Mr. Johnson said many Republicans had “voted no but prayed yes,” in part because “they just didn’t want to have to go home and try to explain that.”
But even opponents of the bill noted that voters’ resistance was not as passionate as the rebellion over it on Capitol Hill.
“A lot of people are saying ‘Hey, we want you guys to be united,’” Mr. Roy said, describing his constituents’ sentiments about ousting Mr. Johnson over the vote. “That’s the conundrum here.”
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Ms. Greene strongly suggested on Tuesday that she would move ahead with her threat to call a vote on removing Mr. Johnson, after Democrats confirmed they would vote to kill any such bid.
Her effort has laid bare how toxic the divide is among House Republicans even after the vote.
At his town hall, Mr. Miller denounced Ms. Greene as someone who “spouted Russian disinformation.” He also chastised a majority of Republicans who voted against the aid as people who “don’t have the moral courage to take a tough vote.”
He also claimed that Mr. Trump, with whom he still speaks regularly, agreed with him.
“Did anyone notice he was very quiet on everything?” Mr. Miller said of the former president. “There’s a reason for that. Because he wanted it to happen.”
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Representative Tony Gonzales, a Texas Republican who also voted for the Ukraine aid bill, said on Sunday on CNN, “I serve with some real scumbags.”

He was referring to Representatives Matt Gaetz of Florida and Representative Bob Good of Virginia, both of whom have vocally opposed Ukraine aid.
“Matt Gaetz, he paid for minors to have sex with him at drug parties,” Mr. Gonzales said, repeating allegations connected to a sex-trafficking case that the Justice Department investigated before declining to bring charges. “Bob Good endorsed my opponent, a known neo-Nazi.”
Mr. Miller called the two and their like-minded colleagues “the clown caucus.”
He also criticized Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, one of the most prominent Republican voices urging his colleagues to oppose aid to Ukraine. “He’s a one-issue senator, and it’s all about Ukraine,” Mr. Miller said. “He thinks this is his winning issue and topic to be vice president. His rhetoric is very dangerous.”
Mr. Johnson, for his part, traveled to nine states over the recess, raising money for Republicans including Ms. Miller-Meeks and Mr. Gonzales, who both voted for the aid and are facing tough re-election races. Mr. Johnson’s takeaway from the experience, he said, was that the anger directed at him on social media did not translate into real life.
“Among the people who attend rallies and write checks to the cause and the grass-roots activists, I think people understood that this was a historic moment for us,” the speaker said. “It makes sense to people. I think they understood.”
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Mr. Johnson added that he had been surprised and disappointed that a majority of House Republicans had voted against the aid to Ukraine. He had harsh words for the opponents.
“I just thought that was a dereliction of duty,” said Mr. Johnson, who as a rank-and-file lawmaker largely opposed efforts to fund Kyiv’s war effort and as speaker hesitated for months before bringing it to the floor. “But it is what it is. We got it done.”
If Ms. Greene expected that grass-roots anger would boil over after the vote and translate into more Republicans joining her in supporting the move to oust him, Mr. Johnson said he believed the opposite had happened.
“I think it will be easier in the days ahead,” the speaker said. “I think some of the really tough issues are now behind us.”

Do the Iowa men's and women's track team s compete at the Drake Relays? If not, why? TIA

Sometimes you just have to cut your losses.

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I recently started renting out the second house on my farm. The house has a large lawn which I was planning to mow along with my own lawn. The young man living renting out the house used to work for a landscaping company and volunteered to mow the lawn if I would let him use my equipment. This saves me from spending half of a day mowing/trimming their yard.

Anyway, I'm wondering what would be a reasonable amount to deduct from their monthly rent in the summer months for him doing the mowing/trimming using my equipment and fuel?

Hate to admit I kinda like the former player now.

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Joining the team as a PWO.

I’m looking forward to seeing him come out of nowhere to lead the Hawks to victory over MSU when McNamara, Labas, Hill, and Lainez are all injured.

The Bad News: It requires up to 9 'jabs' of an mRNA vaccine, custom made for each patient.

Sorry MAGAs, you'll have to wait for some other future therapy in the meantime...
Reduced risk of recurrence by half over 3 years.


Dr Heather Shaw, the national coordinating investigator for the trial, said the jabs had the potential to cure people with melanoma and are being tested in other cancers, including lung, bladder and kidney.

“This is one of the most exciting things we’ve seen in a really long time,” said Shaw. “This is a really finely honed tool. To be able to sit there and say to your patients that you’re offering them something that’s effectively like the Fat Duck at Bray versus McDonald’s – it’s that level of cordon bleu that’s coming to them … The patients are really excited about them.”

The vaccine is an individualised neoantigen therapy. It is designed to trigger the immune system so it can fight back against a patient’s specific type of cancer and tumour.

Known as mRNA-4157 (V940), the vaccine targets tumour neoantigens, which are expressed by tumours in a particular patient. These are markers on the tumour that can potentially be recognised by the immune system.


Generalized to other tumors, doctors are claiming it could provide a cure for many other cancers, as well.

F’ing Nelson

91 and still the damn man.

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What is a text you sent or received lately that when read alone seems completely different than the whole story?

“A little A&D on the ole butthole this morning and I’m feeling GREAT!!”

A former faculty adviser and a former coach for the embattled Iowa State University crew club — which three years ago came under scrutiny after two students drowned during a club activity — are “immune from personal liability” and have been dropped from a lawsuit scheduled for trial next week.



A Story County judge agreed with the defendants — Iowa State, the State of Iowa, former ISU Assistant Director for Sports Clubs in Recreation Services John Wolfe, former faculty adviser Jeffrey Iles, and former club coach Dustin Gentry — on that portion of their request for summary judgment, seeking a court order negating the need for the May 7 trial.


But the judge in her April 26 decision denied the summary judgment request for the rest of the defendants — including the State of Iowa and Iowa State — agreeing with the family of 20-year-old Yaakov Ben-David, one of the students who died on March 28, 2021, that “summary judgment is not proper.”




"The defendants attempt to disclaim any duty of care associated with the March 28 water practice in isolation, arguing that they did nothing to expose Mr. Ben-David to a risk of physical harm he would not have otherwise faced by getting on the water that day,“ according to the judge’s order. ”The court is not convinced.“


Ben-David’s parents, Eric and Sarah Ben-David, of New Jersey, filed their initial lawsuit Nov. 1, 2022, and then added on defendants Iles and Gentry in January 2024.


Family members of the other student who died in the crew club capsizing on Little Wall Lake three years ago — Derek Nanni, 19, of Normal, Ill. — settled their wrongful death claim with the state in December 2022 for $2 million.


With a last-minute settlement in the Ben-David case unlikely, and at least part of Iowa State’s request for summary judgment denied, a trial in Story County next week appears imminent.





“Despite the defendants’ attempts to distance themselves from the crew club, it was not just a random group of adults from Ames, Iowa, who chose to form a group and go rowing off-campus,” the judge wrote in her order. “Instead, it was a school sanctioned club subject to certain written policies and procedures — including certain ISU employees being specifically assigned to be responsible for safety training, approval of off-campus travel, and other related matters.


“A reasonable jury could find that the defendants could have reasonably foreseen harm to Mr. Ben-David in engaging in a crew club practice without any life jackets or safety training, particularly in light of the crew club raising these exact concerns to the ISU employees more than a year earlier.”

Wrongful death, reckless conduct​

The case stems from a series of events — outlined in the lawsuit — culminating on a frigid and gusty March morning, when the ISU crew club had planned a water practice.


Two years earlier, a former club president had emailed Director Wolfe warning him the group had been out of compliance with USRowing safety protocols for years and needed a dock, launch boat with life jackets, and mandatory swim tests.


Other than the swim tests, no action was taken to address the safety concerns — and Ben-David joined the group a year later in early 2021. He had never rowed in open water, but passed the swim test March 18. Ten days later, he arrived with several others at 7:30 a.m. for a practice — absent coach Gentry.


“Weather conditions that morning violated USRowing’s safety rules and the crew club’s constitution,” according to the lawsuit, which reported, “student members had never been properly trained in the appropriate reaction to a capsize event.”


So when the boat did capsize that morning, the students left it and tried to swim to shore — even as training would have taught them to stay with the boat. Ben-David and Naani both drowned, two members were rescued from the water, and a fifth successfully swam to shore.


Unaware of the capsizing, a second group with the club opted not to go out later — due to the weather.


In suing the state, school, and several leaders involved in the club, Ben-David’s family alleged six counts — including wrongful death, reckless conduct and negligence.

‘The defendants had no duty’​

In weighing the state and Iowa State’s push for summary judgment in their favor, the judge considered first their argument for entitled immunity — and denied it — finding they "failed to demonstrate as a matter of law that their inaction in the face of contrary policies and known dangers to their students was the type of judgment the legislature intended to shield from immunity.“


To the argument Iowa State didn’t owe the students “a special duty to supervise and oversee the ISU crew club and its activities,” they maintained all decisions that put Ben-David in harm’s way that day “were made by Mr. Ben-David and the other student club members.”


“They claim they did not control the overall decision to row that morning and that the crew club made all decisions that day, including whether to practice at all, when, where, how, and who would practice.”


But the court again was dissuaded by that argument.


“The main thrust of the defendants’ argument appears to be that, because they completely abdicated their obligations to provide any safety training and oversight to the crew club, the adult students engaging in an off-campus activity on March 28 did not rely on the defendants’ (lack of) safety training and oversight that day, so therefore the defendants had no duty to prevent injuries or death resulting from untrained students engaging in the activities,” according to the court order.


“Suffice it to say, the record contains a more complete picture than that put forth by the defendants, beginning with the crew club reaching out over one year before the March 28 water practice, alerting the defendants to safety concerns and requests.”


Given the volunteer status of the faculty adviser and club coach, however, both Iles and Gentry were found to be immune from personal liability and dismissed from the case.

Iowa is falling further behind other states in terms of test scores, spending on public education, healthy weight, and equitable criminal justice.



But we are leading the pack for states that make certain groups feel like they no longer belong here.


Gov. Kim Reynolds stated that “religious rights have increasingly come under attack” upon signing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, Senate File 2095 into law. But this begs the question who is attacking religion? Is it the religious people speaking out against hateful laws, many using Scripture to show these rights are not embodied in holy texts? Or the people stirring up hate and taking away rights of others in the name of religion?




It is important to have diversity of thought and opinion. The First Amendment still is a thing. But the rights based on certain beliefs are being elevated, and this elevation is being used to erode the rights of Iowans who were born a different color or love or live differently than what is considered acceptable by dominant society.


But to be clear, the only way religion is being attacked is using it as an excuse to harm, belittle, and persecute marginalized communities.


And let’s be precise in our language, attack from their standpoint is too strong a word to describe the reality of public pushback on the seeds of hate and fear that are being sown in our state.


Proclaimed religious beliefs are now legally allowed to be used to discriminate against other protected classes. These “beliefs” are used to justify categorizing certain groups as “sinful” or worthy of discrimination on the basis of some inkling their God would want them to distance themselves from others.





For those not familiar with the term, othering is “the act of treating someone as if they are not part of a group and are different in some way.” Othering is harmful to society as it exacerbates existing social division and negatively impacts the economy in numerous ways. We have seen this with the threat of some businesses and professionals to leave our state.


All this matters, of course, to those to whom the psychological turmoil and dehumanization of Iowan’s who are othered is not enough to justify outrage.


Othering has been used to defend atrocities and oppression for centuries. Watching the suffering occurring in multiple theatres around the world, it is difficult to understand how genocide, ethnic cleansing, and the innocent civilian casualties do not tear our hearts apart. Maybe it is protective? Some shield themselves from the news or turn to other entertainment and or to the latest scandalous event as it is too much pain to process.


But what is particularly troubling is the justification for mass killing across the globe or the extreme dehumanization of our neighbors here at home, because they are different.


We can hear it in the grocery store line. During sermons at some religious institutions. On public transportation or at public restaurants. “Well, if they just …” “They struck first …” And even, “but they are just different from us, their values are not the same and they are just not right.”


Having traveled extensively, I have heard firsthand the stories of locals in other countries struggling to piece together multiple jobs to afford the most basic of housing. Housing costs have skyrocketed because wealthy foreigners, many of whom are Americans, are buying second homes or investment properties. It is OK for us to disrupt the housing markets of others, but others may not come here to seek a better life for their children. Some insist that they would be fine with immigration if the others “do it the legally,” but fail to acknowledge these laws were made by and for those who have the birthright and access to make this possible. The glaring difference from us doing it elsewhere and others trying to make their way here is that research shows that immigrants to America have a positive benefit to our society, whether they come legally or otherwise.


We are coming to the end of a golden era of American power and prosperity. If man made or natural disaster were to strike our country, what would we do? Pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and make do even when futile, or try to find a better life for our family elsewhere? Like our wealthier countrymen are already doing on foreign soil?


For those who wanted to curtail health care, specify what bathroom others can use, what sports they can play, and insist on their being outed, how would they feel if their child made the brave decision to live their authentic self as someone who would be othered? How would they handle the depression and the fear their loved one now faces in this state of intolerance?


Religious principles — and especially the teaching of Jesus — of feeding the hungry, protecting immigrants, and treating others with dignity were nowhere to be seen in many other policy decisions made this year.


The God or other religious entities that many of us grew up with hold love as the most important religious principle. In fact, the “steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end.”


Iowa doesn’t feel like a place of steadfast love and endless mercies.


This God or any other deity must be ashamed and frustrated by acts of hate and cruelty in their name. This is the real attack on religion.


It is time for Iowa legislators and their constituents “To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”


Chris Espersen is a Gazette editorial fellow. chris.espersen@thegazette.com

Opinion: The ‘attack on Christianity’ is coming from inside the building

The only way religion is being attacked is using it as an excuse to harm, belittle, and persecute marginalized communities

www.thegazette.com

I just listened to the Post Reports episode on this and learned some interesting things.

Flu fragments have been found in 1 of 5 samples of store-bought milk.

The good news about that is that when they culture those samples, no flu grows. People have been saying that pasteurization would make it safe, and that seems to be confirmed.

Bad news is that dairies are supposed to test against things like this, and no milk is supposed to be sent for processing if flu is found. Clearly that isn't happening the way it should.

Apparently the federal government can't go in and test cows. They are private companies. So it's mostly voluntary. Normally, the only time the feds can test is if cows are crossing state lines.

Uncle Sam wants YOU … to hire Grandpa as a piano lugger.

Or else.

That’s the latest madness from the federal government’s woke bowels: an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawsuit against Fresno-based Meathead Movers after the company refused to comply with a demand for a $15 million settlement.

Meathead’s crime?

“Discouragement bias,” i.e., the claim that hiring student-athletes of both genders in tip-top shape as movers and touting that fact in ads somehow discourages older people from applying for jobs.

First: Are AARP members really queuing up to get gigs as movers?

We understand that Bidenomics has ruined a lot of people’s retirements, but that seems … dubious.

Especially since the lawsuit isn’t even based on a specific complaint.

Not one, when the EEOC saw 70,000-plus workplace discrimination complaints last year alone.

In other words, the feds “discovered” some nonexistent violation of employment law and then went to the mattresses with a moving firm, initially demanding the eight-figure settlement (With whom, exactly? All the people who didn’t complain?) before dropping to a more “reasonable” figure close to $5 million.

Meathead even made a good-faith counteroffer in the face of this blatant extortion; the EEOC refused to take it and later filed suit.

And while Meathead has insanely been on fed radar since 2017, the big push here clearly comes from Charlotte Burrows, President Biden’s pick to head the EEOC.

She’s a congenital wokist who has vowed to crack down on age discrimination.

Even, it seems, where none exists.

A moving company using pics of ripped young employees in ads doesn’t discourage older people from trying to work there — it’s a sales technique, and it’s clearly effective.

And there’s zero hiring discrimination: “We are 100% open to hiring anyone at any age if they can do the job,” as the company’s head put it.

Indeed, we suspect game legs and twingey lower backs are the real discouragement for mature folks here.

Yet to our out-of-control feds, this thriving and socially valuable firm is just an opportunity for blackmail:

"Nice small business you got there, be a shame if something happened to it."

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Apparently assaulted Corby

I wonder how many of the idiots that follow and listen to her agree?

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